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Really?

Really.

REEEEeeeeaally?

Really.

Really, really, really?

Really.

OMG, really?

Really.

No, I mean it- realllllllllyyyyyyyy?

Really.

No shit, really?

Yup. Really.

Holy crap.

How’d we let this happen, people?

I mean, really?

I’m running down so many different things right now, scampering wildly after each and every one of them in the damply dark tunnels of me and chasing their maddeningly glowing eyes and razor teeth and grasping claws that I think I may need a pause. 

Relax, dude. I say to myself.

Breathe deep. 

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Miss Carol and me woke up Sunday morning surprised by snow and no cable. Actually, we’d been out at a bar on Saturday night in the snow so that wasn’t as much of a surprise as seeing our cable laying curled up and dead in the middle of the road. 

I gritted my teeth and girded my loins and called Cox cable ’cause honestly? I think I’d rather have my eyeballs tattooed.

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I don’t know if it was the storm or a truck that blew through and snagged the cable but I suspect the latter because of the way everything was ripped from the telephone pole. 

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The first coupla minutes weren’t too bad. Cox’s auto attendant cheerily stepped me through some asinine troubleshooting nonsense- Is the TV turned on? Are ALL of the TV’s in the house experiencing the same problem? Has anything been changed or added?

This is after the same chirpy auto attendant had asked for my name, my address, my 10-digit phone number, and the last four digits of my social security number as if the data base caller ID hadn’t already downloaded all of your pertinent data.

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After about 10 minutes though, shit starts to fall apart and I began to get annoyed. I started to wonder if I really NEED cable TV. Or even really want it.

But then I remembered that our sweet internet access is riding on the same piece of coax.

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It was around the 20-minute mark that the seething anger started creeping in. I was mumbling and cursing when I saw Cutter and Tug and Miss Carol staring at me sadly and realized I had to go and start my day, which, since it’s Sunday, includes the ever-pressing Little House of Horrors and her constantly demanding prerequisite trip to Home Depot.

So I waved bravely, iPhone still crammed to my head, and air-kissed everybody goodbye.

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At 30 minutes I was hoping that everyone that works for Cox Communications and all of their families and friends would die some kind of hideous death too scary to even imagine. Something disgustingly terrifying and hopelessly insidious. I pictured all of their dead and ruined bodies hung dripping from tree branches, crows pecking at their sightless eyes while their children wailed and screamed mommy mommy. Or maybe, daddy daddy.

It was with these happy thoughts dancing in my head that finally, just as my iPhone battery and temper were about shot, just when I’m thinking that taking a rifle up into the tower might not be such a bad idea, a human answered-

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-Good morning and thanks for choosing Cox he chirped cheerily. Before we get started can I get your name, address, 10-digit phone number, and the last four digits of your social security number?

I sighed and gave him the same information that was on the screen pop in front of him.

Then he asks what problem I’m experiencing. When I say that a speeding truck has torn my cable drop off the telephone pole and that it’s laying curled up and dead in the street, he says OK, but before I can dispatch a service technician, I need to ask you a few questions-

Is the TV turned on? he asks.

Are ALL of the TV’s in the house experiencing the same problem? he asks.

Has anything been changed or added? he asks.

When I tersely answer each question- No, the cable is laying dead and curled up in the road- he finally says OK, I can have a service technician out between the hours of 5 and 7 pm on Monday.

MONDAY???!!!

So I say thank-you, silently hoping that he and all of his suffer excruciatingly, and hang up. 

And then I turned MR.GREENE. around, went back to Home Depot, bought the coax connectors, and fixed it myself.

Fuckers.

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There are things that can happen in a decades-long, centuries-long life together that’ll coalesce into stuff that clumps together and solidifies into the kind of immovability that leads to unrelenting sternness.

Miss Carol and me have never had one of those things.

Until now.

This whole trucking thing seems to be threatening our innocently bright-eyed doe-like view of the world.

Things are happening at hyper-speed. I’ve been approached by a transport company to come on board as a newbie owner-operator (something unheard of in the trucking industry-most want 3 yrs experience) so I’d started the finance part of buying a truck and I’d scoped out several tractors and driven a few and maybe even decided on one.

I started to lay it all out to Miss Carol tonight when MR. OBDURATE waddled his fat ass into the room and plunked down all wheezy and sweaty between Miss Carol and me.

He farted and grinned and that was it for that.

Things splintered and the splinters were things totally unrelated to what we’d been talking about.

But the splinters became more important than the issue and MR. OBDURATE sat happily picking his nose and flicking it at us.

I’m rewriting my book.

I know that sounds presumptuously over-reaching and probably overbearingly boorish, but I am and honestly? it was something that I thought I’d hate more than chores, more than work, more than winter.

But I don’t.

I flippin’ love it. Luurrrrve it.

The fast-paced blazingly stripped down first draft that I wrote during NaNoWriMo in November was one thing. That was a sprint. Every night was a hell-bent-for-leather wild-eyed gasping run to the 1700-a-day-word finish line.

But it was fun. It was like the lust of new love what with the constant pounding and eagerness of freshness.

This rewriting stuff is being something waaaaay different.

It’s fuller and slower and rounder. Kinda like sitting in a dark bar with an old friend slowly sipping or maybe spending a long afternoon cuddling in warm sunlight-something like that.

It’s cool.

Oh jeez.

It’s happened again. 

Ever have one of those days that when you wake up you think are gonna go one way but then they bitch slap you and spit you out and become a totally different day from anything you could’ve possibly imagined?

No?

Too bad. ‘Cause Monday was one of those days for me. I woke up thinkin’ I’d be doing one thing and instead, did something wholly, completely different.

Let me add some backstory -driving back and forth to work on The Little House of Horrors I’d noticed a Peterbilt tractor that just sat, going nowhere. Trucks are expensive and expensive to let sit so I finally screwed my courage to the sticking place and stopped on Monday morning between trips ferrying gasoline and generators to Phabulous Phil to see if it was for sale or what.

A curious little old man who spoke a language I couldn’t understand showed the truck to me, indicating in his feral manner that it seemed to be for sale but that he couldn’t possibly tell me who owned it or how much they might be asking.

After much grunting and groany gesticulating I thanked him and drove away. But I was hooked. She’s dirty, she’s been sitting for five years, but she’s cool and she’s everything I ever wanted in a truck.

The exposed stacks, the dual air cleaners, the rocket launcher ID and cab lights, the air horns and train horn, the 13 gear tranny,  cleaned up I imagined she’d be perfect.

Unfortunately, I’m still tied up at the hospital and Miss Carol likes me home nights so I contacted an old buddy of mine who just got his CDL to see if he’d be interested in driving for me. He could drive 80 or 90% of the time and I could spell him and go out on the road when my schedule and Miss Carol let me.

Perfect, yes?

‘Cept this morning I went back early and spoke with the widow of the owner. Turns out he was an ex-cop that bought the truck new in 2001 and drove her until he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006. He tried to keep her up and running until last year when his cancer just got too bad and he was forced to watch her sit and rust while he died.

His widow is asking a pretty high price for her mostly ’cause I don’t think she wants to sell. And I can’t blame her, but the math isn’t working out right now so I don’t know.

But man, I want her.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I feel like I’ve turned a corner, like maybe I’m running downhill with the wind at my back like maybe someday somehow this will all be over and me and Miss Carol will live uber happily ’till we puke and die.

Just sayin.

Chuck Palahniuk can be flipping amazing.

He’ll take a subject, any subject, push and prod it to extremes and then toss it into a beat-up old car we’ll call Grotesquery and drive the whole mess off a cliff we’ll call The Way Beyond The Grossly Imagined Pale.

It’s always sickenly fun. I’ve read several of his books and listened to several more. They always explore places you never ever thought you’d wanna go and visit.

Damned is another one.

Thirteen year old Madison ends up in Hell after an unfortunate Hello Kitty condom auto-erotic strangulation and has to traverse places like the Dandruff Desert, The Valley of Used Disposable Diapers- carefully sidestepping The Swamp of Partial Abortions and the always rising Ocean of Wasted Sperm to win her job in Hell’s Call Center telemarketing people at dinnertime.

Classic Chuck.

It’s fun. Read it. And if you buy the hardcover, check out the book jacket. I don’t know what it’s printed on but, it feels like, skin?

A week ago in a fumbling fugue I left Cutter’s home arrest collar on when we went walking and he passed right through the electric fence we’ve installed to keep the boys safe from outside insidiousness.

I was like, WTF?

So I went to the Pet Stop woman and explained what had happened and she did an electronic thing to check the collar and told me that maybe I needed to snug up their collars so the prong things made better contact.

And that’s what I did.

Oh my god the drama. Cutter immediately staggered into the living room and collapsed pawing feebly at the collar.

I……can’t……….breathe, he wheezed.

Tug slumped and rolled over on his back.

Me neither, he said, I can’t breathe too.

I looked at the two of them and I was like, dudes you so suck.

So I made a cocktail and started reading the newspaper. I don’t know why we still get a paper. Maybe I like reading about what happened yesterday. Whatever it is I do it.

And Cutter and Tug jumped up on the couch watching and waiting expectantly for Miss Carol.

When she walked in they started up again.

Ack. and Ack. Cutter wheezed, limply pawing at his collar.

Me neither, Tug said, I can’t breathe too.

What’s up with them? Miss Carol asked, kissing me.

I told her they were just being fags and told her the whole story about the collars and the Pet Stop woman and Miss Carol leaned down and felt the snugness of Cutter’s collar.

Honey, she said, they are little too tight.

Cutter lit up. I tole him that, he said, looking at Miss Carol imploringly with glistening puppy dog eyes. See what happens when you’re not around?

Carol, I said, please don’t buy into this and make it worse.

Can I get a lawyer? I need a lawyer, Cutter said. The mental anguish ALONE is huge, he said. I might be DYING he said.

Me neither. I can’t breathe too, Tug said.

They are a little too tight, Miss Carol said.

Carol, I said.

Cutter flopped to his side and stared off into a distant dark corner of the kitchen and said, I’m coming home mommy.

Oh stop, I said.

Tug said, Me neither. I can’t breathe too.